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I started arranging pop songs for the Quints and then got inspired to write original music for a cappella men’s voices. To date, I have written a few pop songs, including the still-controversial “I’ve Got An Itch For You” and the curtain-raising classic “Feel the Love (and Turn Off Your Cellphones).” I also began a series of gospel-inspired settings of some of the shorter psalms, including a surprisingly upbeat version of Psalm 130 (the “De Profundis” text- in English, “Out of the Depths”). I would like to set all 150 psalms to music before I die, but some of them resist any human effort to make them anything but deeply disturbing.
We sing a lot at Christmas, as do all singing groups, and so I have also written several original Christmas carols. Although originally written for five men’s voices, I have rearranged a few for SATB choir. Two of them, “Frozen Morn” and “Carpenter’s Song” have been performed by the Stockbridge Festival Chorus at their annual concerts. In December of 2007, "Frozen Morn" received an Honourable Mention from the annual Christams carol competition sponsored by the Amadeus Choir in Toronto.
The big music project so far has been the original a cappella opera What Owls Do which premiered in December 2005. I wrote the libretto after hearing an inspiring Advent sermon on the prophecies of Isaiah. The opera is 35 minutes long, with parts for five men (or three men, a woman and a boy). It features a very hungry owl who captures a little mouse but learns, in the course of the opera, the meaning of peace on Earth. It is hard to sing all that time without instrumental backup, but it works…and, of course, it is highly portable, since all we need are our voices.
Musicians interested in performing these works can contact me via the contact page on this site. We don’t have any great CDs yet although there is a demo-quality CD of What Owls Do available for those who want to get an idea of the piece. And my next big project is a new, longer and darker opera, tentatively titled The Beasts. So much to do, so little time....
